Institutions Earn the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification

More than half of campuses in the Bonner Network (and three-quarters of those with established four-year Bonner Programs) have earned the prestigious Carnegie Community Engagement Classification

The Carnegie Community Engagement Classification is the only elective classification that the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching offers (and a way to distinguish a school regardless of its size or general classification). As noted by the Carnegie Foundation: “The Carnegie Classification has been the leading framework for recognizing and describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education for the past four and a half decades.

Starting in 1970, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed a classification of colleges and universities to support its program of research and policy analysis.” This framework has been widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students, or faculty.

Earning the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification requires an institution to demonstrate, with copious evidence, that community engagement is deeply integrated across its curriculum and co-curriculum. The application itself is intended to catalyze or deepen institutional and cultural commitment, because it requires institutions to put into place policies and practices that affirm the work, including for faculty hiring, rewards, and scholarship.

While the number of campuses in the entire Bonner network is less than one percent of all US colleges and universities, the Bonner network is well represented amongst institutions that have earned the Carnegie Classification. In fact, thirty institutions in the Bonner network have earned the Classification since its creation in 2006. Since only 361 institutions have earned it as of 2015, this also means that about ten percent of classified institutions have a Bonner Program. Additionally, several of the small colleges that have been noted as having outstanding applications are home to a Bonner Program including Macalester, Stetson, and Wagner.

These institutions in the network have earned the Carnegie Classification:

Allegheny College (2006, 2015)

Augsburg College (2008, 2015)

Bates College (2008, 2015)

Berea College (2008, 2015)

Berry College (2010)

Edgewood College (2015)

Emory & Henry College (2008, 2015)

Macalester College (2010)

Montclair State University (2015)

Notre Dame de Namur University (2015)

Oberlin College (2010)

Our Lady of the Lake College (2010)

Pfieffer University (2008, 2015)

Rhodes College (2006, 2015)

Rollins College (2008, 2015)

Rutgers University - Camden (2015)

Rutgers University - New Brunswick (2010)

Rutgers University - Newark (2010, 2015)

Siena College (2015)

Stetson University (2008, 2015)

The College of New Jersey (2015)

UNC - Chapel Hill (2006, 2015)

University of Houston (2008) and University of Houston Downtown (2015) (separate institution)